


Care

by celeste9



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Caretaking, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Hair Braiding, Hair Brushing, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-07 18:52:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10367148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9
Summary: Finn’s cheeks felt warm. “Your hair,” he mumbled.Rey’s eyebrows shot up. “You want to fix my hair?”“I want to… touch it, mostly.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> beautifullights suggested Finn/Rey fic with Finn's hands in Rey's hair and when it comes to hair touching, I am weak, so I wrote this basically immediately, lol.

There never seemed to be an end to the differences between the First Order and the Resistance.

This was a good thing, obviously. Finn hadn’t quit the First Order just to end up somewhere that was the same in all but name, after all.

So Finn was happy to count all the ways that life here had changed from what he had known before. The food in the mess was actually halfway edible, and sometimes there were varieties from cultures across the galaxy, depending on the supplies they had available.He was allowed visitors whenever he was stuck in the infirmary, and people actually _wanted_ to visit him. Everyone had names and command knew all their names. He got actual free time.

No one wore masks.

Finn thought maybe that was what he liked best. General Organa showed her face to all, and so did her brother, Luke, the Jedi. The foot soldiers, the pilots, they all got to be themselves. Not faceless beings in uniform, parts of a machine, but living, breathing lifeforms whose uniqueness was embraced.

Finn was _Finn,_ in his patched up jacket, with his blaster at his hip, and all those things were his.

In the corridors he passed humans and non-humans alike, light skin, dark skin, green skin, blue. Sharp teeth and blunt, some with fur, some with smooth skin, some with hair bound up or curling around their ears or falling straight.

It represented freedom to Finn in a way that he couldn’t articulate even to himself, in his own head.

“Yuck,” Rey said, squelching around in their quarters. She was dripping rainwater and mud all over, and probably sweat, too. “Sometimes I miss sand.”

Finn grimaced. “Ugh, get out of here with that dirty mouth.” He was surprised that after Jakku he didn’t have nightmares about sand stuck up in places sand should never go.

“You try training with Master Luke in one of this planet’s damn thunderstorms, even you’ll be missing Jakku.” Rey quirked a smile at him, wringing out the end of her robe on the floor. “Well, all right. Maybe you wouldn’t.”

“You realize you could’ve just gone to the fresher. Saved us a lot of mess.”

“Then I would’ve missed the look on your face.” Rey grabbed a change of clothes and ducked out past Finn when he tried to grab her, waving at him as she ran out the door. “Have fun cleaning!”

“Aw, damn it, Rey,” Finn grumbled. He sat on the bed for an instant, determined to leave the mess for Rey, but his gaze kept dragging down to the floor and eventually he admitted defeat.

As he crawled around on the floor with a towel, he reluctantly acknowledged that the First Order’s enforcement of cleanliness and order had been far superior to the lackadaisical attitude taken by the Resistance. So maybe not _all_ the differences were good differences.

He should probably consider himself lucky that Rey was going to the fresher at all. She didn’t mind dirt. It was probably the wetness.

By the time she came back, Finn was lying down with his datapad. Rey’s hair was damp, wavier than usual, probably from the towel she had still slung over her shoulders. As if to confirm Finn’s thought, she drew the towel off and rubbed it over her head again, dropping it to the floor when she was done.

Finn sighed.

Rey’s hair looked even frizzier. She rummaged on the desk for a hair tie and began pulling it back.

“Wait,” Finn said, not sure where his sudden urge was coming from but nevertheless…

Rey wasn’t one for styling, really. She dressed and wore her hair for function and she got ready quickly. Still, sometimes Finn liked to watch her, liked to watch her comb her hair at the desk before she knotted it up in the morning before training, liked to watch her take it down in the evening before she went to bed. She had pretty hair, dark and soft, and every so often Finn got to slide his fingers through it when she was asleep. He liked the way it crimped when she let it down, like her hair remembered being held in place and was trying to replicate it still. He liked the way it fell loose around her shoulders when she was ready for bed.

He wondered if Rey would let him touch it now.

“What?” Rey’s hands were frozen halfway in the act of tying up her hair.

“Could I… could I do it?”

“Do what?”

Finn’s cheeks felt warm. “Your hair,” he mumbled.

Rey’s eyebrows shot up. “You want to fix my hair?”

“I want to… touch it, mostly.”

Rey was regarding him like some unusual puzzle she was having difficulty sorting out. “You want to touch my hair.”

“It’s not that weird.” Feeling defensive, now, Finn tried to think of something that might work in his favor. “Poe! Jess is always touching his hair, and they’re not even dating.”

“Poe’s hair is like an entity all on its own. _You_ touch Poe’s hair sometimes.”

“Yeah, and it’s _nice._ He likes it, too, so… so… Come on, Rey.”

Rey’s expression softened but only a little; there was a smirk threatening to break out. She came and sat next to Finn, cross-legged. “There are easier ways to get in a little foreplay, you know.”

Finn snorted. “Excuse you, your mind sank into the gutter all on its own.”

Laughing, Rey turned her back to Finn. “Okay, well, go on, then. Have at your not-sexy hair touching.”

Taking the opportunity to pull a hank of her hair, Finn then got up momentarily to find Rey’s brush where it was shoved into a drawer. Then he sat down behind her and carefully pulled her brown hair back from out over her shoulders, dragging his fingers briefly over her neck. Okay, so it wasn’t meant to be foreplay, exactly, but he did intend for them both to enjoy this.

Poe had told Finn a story, once, of watching his father brush his mother’s hair, of how even as a little boy watching, Poe could see the love that was in the doing of it, the care, the tenderness. With an adult’s understanding of the memory, Poe knew the intimacy that had been in that moment, and Finn had understood it, too, hearing Poe talk about it.

Finn loved Rey more than he had realized it was possible to love someone. In the First Order, he hadn’t been allowed to love. He had been reprimanded even for showing unnecessary emotions towards his squad.

Slip. They had told him off for trying to help Slip and Finn would never forget that.

That was the other thing he liked best about being in the Resistance.

The ability to care.

Rey shivered when Finn lifted her hair off her back, sliding his hands through it, brushing the back of her neck. He took the brush and stroked down, root to end, and then stroked twice more, three times. He went slowly, being careful of tangles, trying not to pull.

Gradually he could feel Rey start to relax, the tension in her back and shoulders easing as she got used to him handling her. Rey trusted him, Finn knew; she would never let him touch her like this if she didn’t. But Rey was still anxious of what she didn’t know, of unfamiliar intimacies, of letting people in where they hadn’t been before.

It was a gift, Finn thought. That she let him so close, closer than anyone else. Fierce Rey, who had knocked him on his ass the first time they had met and who could still knock him on his ass when they sparred. She was still the most beautiful person Finn had ever known, in every aspect.

Once he had combed all the knots through and the brush slid from Rey’s temple all the way to the ends without even the smallest catch, Finn set the brush down. He put his hands in her hair, instead, still a little bit damp, but soft and clean and sweet-smelling, like the shampoo Poe had bought her in the Core.

Rey sighed quietly and Finn smiled to himself. He rubbed lightly at her temples, massaged her scalp, and then just ran his hands through her pretty hair, over and over. He shifted his position slightly, stretching his legs on either side of Rey, and she leaned back into him.

“That’s okay?” Finn said, still petting her hair.

Rey’s only response was a soft humming noise that rang with contentment.

So Finn didn’t stop. As long as Rey was comfortable, Finn was going to indulge in this unexpected luxury. He remembered Rey shouting at him on Jakku for holding his hand. It seemed terribly long ago.

The tie Rey had been going to use to put up her hair was on the mattress by her thigh. Finn wondered if he could…

In theory, braiding hair didn’t seem terribly complicated. It wasn’t like one of General Organa’s elaborate hairstyles or anything. It was just one bunch of hair over the next, right?

Finn carefully separated out Rey’s hair, just the top layer, into three bunches. That was easy enough. After that… Well, maybe he had underestimated the skill required. Or maybe he just hadn’t looked closely enough at a braid before. His fingers felt clumsy as he tried faking his way through steps he didn’t know and he lost it a few times, Rey’s hair falling free again.

She had caught on to what he was doing, judging by her amused laughter and then her offer to do it herself.

“No,” Finn said, stubbornly determined to do it. He knew it was a silly goal; Rey wasn’t even going out. She didn’t particularly need her hair up; she had just wanted it out of the way. It was a juvenile sort of caretaking at best.

But Finn still wanted to do it. He was _allowed._

He felt a strange sort of satisfaction when he was finally able to loop the tie around the ends. The braid was loose and uneven but it kept Rey’s hair out of her face and Finn had done that for her. She had sat with him bonelessly while he played with her hair and let him fix it for her, as probably no one had ever done. Rey hadn’t had parents or family on Jakku to do this for her.

Another gift, he thought. She had let him.

“All finished,” he said, and Rey was a bit slow to turn around to face him, as though she had been happy where she was.

“You’ve only done it partway,” Rey said, fingering the loose hair brushing her shoulders.

Finn stroked his fingers through it again, then touched Rey’s cheek. “I like how it looks. If that’s okay.”

Rey’s smile was soft and surprised. “It’s okay. Think maybe I’ll keep it like this, actually. Something different. Have to fix the braid, though, it’ll fall out the second I start training.” Rey pushed herself into Finn’s lap, straddling him, and kissed his mouth, fingers dancing up the back of his neck.

Finn tried to pull her closer, a hand on her hip and the other on her back. “We can maybe do the regular foreplay thing now,” he suggested, nipping at her lip, and Rey’s breathless giggle was one of the sweetest sounds Finn had ever heard.

**_End_ **

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on Tumblr [here](http://serceleste.tumblr.com)


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